Not Enough Money for Free Time

A recent article in Time observed that people generally do a poor job in terms of trading off time and money, or more specifically, we tend to overvalue money and the expense of time, which is truly more valuable. As the head of study notes:

"Work is necessary to pay the bill and contributes to an individual's sense of productivity and self-esteem, but the number of hours Americans spend working frequently exceeds that required to provide these benefits."

This is basically another way of saying that we perceive a level of work needed to provide which is much higher than reality. I'm not sure that this is completely true, because it leaves out the very large variable of the "what" in terms of "what is needed to provide." Most people, right or wrong, have a desire to live somewhere above the poverty level, allowing for a degree of amenity, comfort, leisure and luxury. What that level of amenity, comfort, leisure and luxury level is entirely up the individual or household. This manifests itself in the size of the house, the type of car you drive, the type of school your kids go to, the proximity to and frequency of going of cultural and entertainment events, the frequency and type of vacations a family goes to, etc.

I acknowledge that it tends to be a viscous cycle, particularly for breadwinners in the family. Many people who live large and want the best of everything often have and need to keep jobs which are extremely demanding from a work-life balance perspective. It begs the question, when do you actually have time to enjoy all these perks that you're high salary has purchased?

Maybe the question people need to ask themselves is more: do I really need these things to make me and my family truly happy and content? At the end of the day, would I rather have had more time spent "hanging out" with the family at home as opposed to rare slices of diversion-filled intense family time in the far reaches of the world?

Maybe the point is that people always seem to give the right answer: I value quality time more. But actions seem to betray those answers. I think this is largely where the "we need" and the "we want" becomes largely blurry, and self-introspection is very much lacking.